Samsung 850 Pro SSD Harddrive-Test Findings

Hi guys, I've been meaning to finish this now for almost a month, I thought it might be of interest to all.  I recently brought a 128 gig Samsung SSD 850 pro, which plugs into an external USB 3 port-this "portable" drive, I've been using for all my audio and video recording projects and I'm amazed.  It is a cheap and in my opinion better alternative to any external 7200 spindle drive on the market, and I've used Esata and various other external solutions for over 5 years-since I dropped bulky desktop systems in favor of laptops.  Nothing comes close to bettering the performance-it's even better than an internal drive-again IMO.
 
Here is the review I've done on my blogsite it contains all the details including my rigorous tests.
https://technicallingo.wo...o-850-pro-vantec-case/
 
Please note this is not spam, I'm just an independent "blogger" (ugh what a horrible term, for want of a better one) I have no affiliation with any company mentioned on blog.
Ben
 PS...sorry about the blandness of my blog, still working on this.
 
If your interested in Android Wear smartwatches I've been using the Sony Smartwatch 3 now for over two months and have written about this here https://technicallingo.wo.../02/13/26/  

Hey Antti, yea I read all the stuff about SSD's and reliability too...the difference with the pro is the 10 year and 40 terabyte guarantee...touch wood the drive seems to be reliable.  Don't forget that technology marches forward and the stuff on the net can be obsolete before it is written.
 
Ben

Jeff Evans
There used to be some concerns about SSD's and recording audio but even with this article in 2009 there does not seem to be an issue.
 
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec09/articles/applenotes_1209.htm
 
I have just built a new machine and I have got a SSD as the C drive.  (At this stage I am running a ITB SATA drive as my audio drive though.)  I believe Samsung make the best SSD's.  Mine is a 250G and it flies.  Windows 7 boots up in no time at all.  And Studio One also boots up so fast I cannot believe it either.  They are pretty cool.

Hi Jeff...nice to hear from you again...I'm getting there...not quite as mad as I was...it's amazing what education does to rewire the brain...that and stimulant medication lol...just know I've always enjoyed our chats...
 
SSD's are amazing if you read my review you will notice I'm using it for video editing too, it blew my mind...no more bottle necking...no more crashing rendering with full effects in minutes not hours...of course it could be the 8 core laptop with 16 gig of ram lol but truly amazing.  Latency almost non-existence even with 50 odd tracks of audio and effects/instruments...it was so much fun playing guitar rig over the last track I posted.  And the SSD needs no external power supply and USB 3.  Honestly a truly portable rig...although power is still needed.  But I'm certain if you had to record a full band or orchestra at 96khz 32 bit fp then this hard-drive could do it.
 
I would not recommend any other brand at this stage guys but Samsung 850 pro's are cheap enough and reliable enough now to do away with any other hard drive.
 
Ben 

kakku
If I ever get enough loose money I will get a puter with a big ssd. Of course this might take a while...

In the meantime, a 128 gb SSD is more than enough if you keep your projects, samples and loops on a hard drive.
I even have all my samples on my SSD.
 
 

kakku
I think that I need more than 128 gigs for the system drive.

On my pc with windows 7 ultimate, the C: partition is 55gb used, 33gb of which are for the C:\Windows folder.
Then 10gb for program files and 2gb for program data , 6 gb for Users, 4gb for pagefile.sys and 1 gb for the rest.
 
Still on the SSD, I have a D: partition with 11gb of programs and an E: partition with 24 gb of everything DAW (including samples) that is not projects or loops.
 
All this on my 128 gb SSD and I still have 27gb free.
 
I did move everything I (easily) could that did not require rapid access, to hard drives (no user symbolic links yet).
 
All of the above will obviously vary from person to person, but it shows that you can get by with a smaller, cheaper SSD.
 
TreeSize Free is great for finding out where all your capacity is going.

I use multiple Samsung 850 pros in my DAW to spread the sample libraries around and get amazing results in not only how much data can stream in real time without coming close to drop outs during playback but in loading these projects with multiple huge sample libraries (KONTAKT, BFD3, MTRON PRO, etc.).  Before going SSD, some of my projects would take up to 5 minutes just to load the sample libraries, now these large projects load in seconds (less than 1 minute) which to me, is simply a pleasure for I have limited time to work on my personal music projects.
 
BIG BIG SSD Fan here and finally the price and reliability of these SSDs has made this feasible.  However, I still use old fashion platter drives for my recorded audio tracks for fear of "wasting" my capacity on these SSDs with all the updating that happens to these dynamic data tracks verses sample library fixed audio files.
 
My new DAW build had only 1 SSD as the C drive but this worked so well, I decided to add 3 more of these drives to my system and I haven't looked back.  Oh and my DAW computer (already built to be quiet) is virtually SILENT in my studio.
 
Life is good in my little personal studio.
 
Jim

Update:After I did a little defragmenting there is now nearly 24 gigs free space in my system partition. Hooray:D

Apparently one shouldn't defragment SSDs.

I have 256GIG of SSD by OCZ and it's great. 2 years nearly and despite having so much software I still barely have 60% used. It's good to not fill drives though as they need room to breathe so to speak.

I have 2 x 1 TB and 1 x 2 TB 7200 rpm SATA 3 drives and it just all hums along fine.